Backyard Landscape Project Part II

As you may know from my last landscape post, we are landscaping our backyard. Last post we removed 14 cubic yards of earth and replaced it with screenings. This weekend we tackled Phase I of the stone work. Phase I includes: the stone patio, stone walkway and stone slab stairs. This all translates into 8 skids of stone which were delivered on Thursday afternoon.

Day 1: Early Friday morning My husband and I, as well as both our Fathers, started unloading skids and started to lay stone. We have 3 sizes of stone, 18x18, 18x24, 18x36 plus two 8' stone slab steps weighing in at 800lbs each. We worked hard all day and by the end of day 1 we laid 100% of the patio and 50% of the walkway....a really good days work!
 
Day 2: Early Saturday morning we started again but one man short. We quickly finished the path and by noon had everything ready to move the steps. After lunch, between the three of us, we moved two 800lbs steps from our driveway, around to our backyard and placed them perfectly at our backdoor! We used 6 pieces of 4" PVC pipes each cut to 20" lengths and like the Egyptians, rolled the stone slab. It was slow and steady work but it's much easier than you think it would be. We are very proud of ourselves for moving and placing those two steps.... we had our doubts (serious doubts) that we could do it due to the rough terrain we had to cross between the two houses but WE DID IT! So by end of day two (which ended at 3pm) we had surpassed our estimated timelines and finished phase I.

Warnings/Injuries: Both my husband and I have worked in landscaping while putting ourselves through school, so we have experience in this department. A lot of planning and calculations went into this...basically what I am saying is don't try this yourself unless you are absolutely sure you know what your doing. Even with our due diligence we did have one injury.  Remember the 800lbs steps I mentioned? When we were moving the second step, the roller at the end of the step where my husband was pushing was removed before he was ready and the end of the step slipped unexpectedly into the ground with his hand underneath it!!! Ugh! We quickly freed his hand but two of his fingers were injuried. Nothing broken (thank God) but without going into details...it was (still is) seriously gross looking. Ugh! So again, if you're not sure what your doing, hire professionals.

Coming Soon: Phase II - Raised Garden/Stone Wall